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- Wednesday Wonderings 10.4.23 - Home Alone 3
Wednesday Wonderings 10.4.23 - Home Alone 3
Fake Sudafed, Meat Collusion, and the Infinite Re-Buy
The Year of the Face Rake continues, with Kevin McCarthy becoming the first ever House Speaker to lose their job. To have it done by his own party of leopard face eaters, as they struggle to keep the gov’t open past Thanksgiving, is just icing on the stupidity cake. Before we start, a quick check in with NYC to see how they handled the random storm that brought record-breaking rainfall:
Clarence Thomas recuses himself as Supreme Court rejects ex-Trump lawyer John Eastman's appeal (NBC News) & Clarence Thomas’ Latest Pay-to-Play Scandal Finally Connects All the Dots (Slate) Pressure works. Sometimes pressure requires hundreds of thousands spent by investigative journalists over decades, but it does work. This recusal might could be one of those load-bearing ones.
Heads They ‘Cha-Ching!’; Tails They Take Away Your Malpractice Insurance (The American Prospect) Not entirely sure it should be legal to do financial wizardry on critical medical infrastructure. This is long, dense, and only really interesting if you’ve worked in healthcare, but clarifying in how things have gotten messed up.
Revealed: Europe’s Role in Making Russia’s Killer Drones (The Guardian) Components made by the USA, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Japan, and Poland, have found their way into the drones Iran is selling to Russia. With 600 documented uses, these kamikaze drones are big business and Russia is buying.
The Chief Embarrassment Officer of X (Slate) & Elon Musk & the Infinite ReBuy (David Karpf) Linda Y’s job is to apologize for Musk and varnish the platform’s reputation. That’s pretty much it. Karpf put it incredibly here:
Isaacson, our narrator, doesn’t grasp the difference. He doesn’t understand poker well enough to recognize Musk as the grandstanding sucker at the table. So he portrays Musk’s complete lack of impulse control as a brilliant, identity-defining strategic ploy. (If you go all-in and lose six times, then go all-in a seventh time and win, then you’re still down five buy-ins.)…The “Great Man” version of history is always limiting (and, as Brian Merchant argues, it should probably be retired at this point), but it is particularly ill-suited to a character like Musk. Isaacson wants his reader to appreciate Musk’s accomplishments and also ponder his personal “demons.” But there is a deeper puzzle that Isaacson constantly avoids “Is Elon Musk really some world-bending genius, or has he just benefitted from the world’s biggest case of survivor bias?”
Can you melt eggs? Quora’s AI says “yes,” and Google is sharing the result (Ars Technica) & 26% of the top 100 websites are now blocking GPTBot (Search Engine Land) As predicted, ChatGPT is getting worse! 1/4 of the biggest sites are actively preventing ChatGPT from scanning their content now, which means the “garbage in, garbage out” cycle might get worse, faster.
For 40 years, Big Meat has openly colluded to rig prices (Pluralistic) Cory Doctorow’s systematic review of how bad we’re all getting screwed by Big Meat is as infuriating as it is unexpected.
“This could be the holy grail to replace palm oil” (BBC) Palm oil is pretty bad, so any advance that weans us off of it, big or small, is welcome news.
Why You Shouldn’t Talk to the Police, Even if You Like the Police (Thoughts From a Small Town Lawyer) & The Privilege To Shut Up (Popehat - 2014) & Oh Won’t You Please Shut Up (Popehat - 2011) JZ pushes us back to reality with a reminder that you really should not ever, ever, talk to cops. Backed up by famed “Shut Up” advocate, Ken “Popehat” White. Please no speaky.
We've Known for 20 Years This Cold Medicine Doesn't Work (NYTimes) Been telling people for damn near a decade. The only Sudafed that works is the one you need to sign your name to buy. The OTC stuff you can get without putting your name on a list? Trash.
Poem of the Week
Quote of the Week
Should've set more traps Kevin! Then you might have been able to keep your house.~Pat Loller
Vibe of the Week
Don’t let the schoolgirl fool wallpaper fool you, there’s metal guitar work, hip hop beats, and a violin just suffering through it.
Moment of Zen by Arkhai
Keep Your Head Up,T